Room with a view a gift of freedom

The Buddle Findlay Sargeson Fellowship allows writers space and relief from workaday constraints. MARGIE THOMSON talks to this year's recipients.

It is the simplest and yet the hardest thing of all: if you want to be a writer, all you have to do is actually write. Not only is this the greatest stumbling block for probably 90 per cent of people who walk around with a novel inside their head (and as a result, that's where these great works stay) but it can be quite a bother for those who do have the drive, discipline or whatever else it is that leads them to do the slog that results in books.

Writers, just like the rest of us, can find it hard to create the mental, physical or financial space to indulge in such a potentially profitless (in terms of money) activity.

As Virginia Woolf said, you have to have five hundred a year and a room with a lock on the door if you are to write fiction or poetry. And that is pretty much what the much-loved Buddle Findlay Sargeson Fellowship offers to writers: a room (with a view, as it happens, over Auckland's beautiful Albert Park) and a stipend for a year.

"I think any award is a good thing," says one of this year's just-announced Sargeson Fellows, Chad Taylor, "but this is particularly good in that they are supporting the writing process, rather than the finished product. Most of the difficulty of writing is finding the time and space to do it."

Taylor, the author of three novels - Pack of Lies, Heaven and, most recently, the noir murder mystery Shirker - but also by necessity a part-time editor, will take up his half of the fellowship in August.

Preceding him in the sparse, central Auckland flat is Wellington playwright, poet and novelist Vivienne Plumb, freed temporarily from a welter of strange jobs, including reading the weather for the meteorological office phone line.

Fresh from Bill Manhire's creative writing course at Victoria University, Plumb is attempting her first full-length novel, Secret City. She has already published two collections of poetry, a playscript, a collection of short fiction (The Wife Who Spoke Japanese in her Sleep) and a novella (The Diary as a Positive in Female Adult Behaviour).

Multi-talented is an apt description for this former Australian: she has won the Bruce Mason Playwright Award, the Hubert Church Prose Award and first prize in the New Zealand Poetry Society International Competition for her poem The Tank, a characteristically pithy, witty work.

Plumb grew up in Sydney where her New Zealand mother encouraged her to read books by New Zealand authors. She trained as an actor and then, 20 years ago, travelled to New Zealand. She has made her home in the capital ever since.

"I don't know because I haven't finished it yet," is her routine response to any questions about her new novel although she thinks it's about imagination.

What she will say is that learning to write a novel is the most exciting thing that she has done. "I've talked to other people about writing novels and they all have really different opinions. So by the time I've finished I'll have worked out some rules for myself."

For Plumb, it's important to keep in mind that she's fortunate to live in an age where opportunities to do what she loves are available to her.

"I've got opportunities my mother never had. So I feel driven to do the best I can, and to leave a history of publication for younger women coming up behind me.

"I have this philosophy now, this theory, that if I work hard it seems to give me back what I need. And that's worked well for me."

Chad Taylor seems to be revelling in a rather cool, understated way in the success of Shirker. Published by British company Canongate, it has had access to much wider markets than many New Zealand books enjoy. Hence the reviews from Britain and the United States which have been rolling in, the most recent a long and enthusiastic one from the Houston Chronicle. Very gratifying, Taylor notes.

Shirker will be translated into German, French and Italian and sold into Europe later this year. Taylor is fairly nonchalant about this. Pack of Lies, his second novel, trod the same path and that was a smooth process.

"The translator queried me on four things ... It's good, reaching a wider audience."

He has lived in central Auckland all his life, so moving to the Sargeson flat, where he will continue work on a new novel, will not represent a major change.

He has recently finished his fourth novel and sent it off to Canongate. Finishing a book is always a good time, he agrees. "Starting them is fun, finishing them is fun. Everything else is just hard work. Hard work indeed."

Says Plumb: "People say to me, 'How do you sit there and do it, day after day?' And I say, 'That's exactly it. That's what you do."'

The Buddle Findlay Sargeson Fellowship has contributed to a considerable body of fiction.

Works that were either written or completed during their authors' tenure at the Sargeson Centre include Catherine Chidgey's second novel Golden Deeds, Kapka Kassabova's Love in the Land of Midas, and Tina Shaw's City of Reeds.

Head1: Room with a view

a gift of freedom


Caption1: GOING INTERNATIONAL: Chad Taylor's third novel, Shirker, will be translated into German, French and Italian. HERALD PICTURE / GLENN JEFFREY

Caption2: WORK ETHIC: "I have this philosophy now, this theory, that if I work hard it seems to give me back what I need," says Wellingtonian Vivienne Plumb.


Blurb1: The Buddle Findlay Sargeson Fellowship allows writers space and relief from workaday constraints. Margie Thomson talks to this year's recipients.


Body1: fxdrop,5,100 I T IS the simplest and yet the hardest thing of all: if you want to be a writer, all you have to do is actually write. Not only is this the greatest stumbling block for probably 90 per cent of people who walk around with a novel inside their head (and as a result, that's where these great works stay) but it can be quite a bother for those who do have the drive, discipline or whatever else it is that leads them to do the slog that results in books.

Writers, just like the rest of us, can find it hard to create the mental, physical or financial space to indulge in such a potentially profitless (in terms of money) activity.

As Virginia Woolf said, you have to have five hundred a year and a room with a lock on the door if you are to write fiction or poetry. And that is pretty much what the much-loved Buddle Findlay Sargeson Fellowship offers to writers: a room (with a view, as it happens, over Auckland's beautiful Albert Park) and a stipend for a year.

"I think any award is a good thing," says one of this year's just-announced Sargeson Fellows, Chad Taylor, "but this is particularly good in that they are supporting the writing process, rather than the finished product. Most of the difficulty of writing is finding the time and space to do it."

Taylor, the author of three novels - Pack of Lies, Heaven and, most recently, the noir murder mystery Shirker - but also by necessity a part-time editor, will take up his half of the fellowship in August.

Preceding him in the sparse, central Auckland flat is Wellington playwright, poet and novelist Vivienne Plumb, freed temporarily from a welter of strange jobs, including reading the weather for the meteorological office phone line.

Fresh from Bill Manhire's creative writing course at Victoria University, Plumb is attempting her first full-length novel, Secret City. She has already published two collections of poetry, a playscript, a collection of short fiction (The Wife Who Spoke Japanese in her Sleep) and a novella (The Diary as a Positive in Female Adult Behaviour).

Multi-talented is an apt description for this former Australian: she has won the Bruce Mason Playwright Award, the Hubert Church Prose Award and first prize in the New Zealand Poetry Society International Competition for her poem The Tank, a characteristically pithy, witty work.

Plumb grew up in Sydney where her New Zealand mother encouraged her to read books by New Zealand authors. She trained as an actor and then, 20 years ago, travelled to New Zealand. She has made her home in the capital ever since.

"I don't know because I haven't finished it yet," is her routine response to any questions about her new novel although she thinks it's about imagination.

What she will say is that learning to write a novel is the most exciting thing that she has done. "I've talked to other people about writing novels and they all have really different opinions. So by the time I've finished I'll have worked out some rules for myself."

For Plumb, it's important to keep in mind that she's fortunate to live in an age where opportunities to do what she loves are available to her.

"I've got opportunities my mother never had. So I feel driven to do the best I can, and to leave a history of publication for younger women coming up behind me.

"I have this philosophy now, this theory, that if I work hard it seems to give me back what I need. And that's worked well for me."

Chad Taylor seems to be revelling in a rather cool, understated way in the success of Shirker. Published by British company Canongate, it has had access to much wider markets than many New Zealand books enjoy. Hence the reviews from Britain and the United States which have been rolling in, the most recent a long and enthusiastic one from the Houston Chronicle. Very gratifying, Taylor notes.

Shirker will be translated into German, French and Italian and sold into Europe later this year. Taylor is fairly nonchalant about this. Pack of Lies, his second novel, trod the same path and that was a smooth process.

"The translator queried me on four things ... It's good, reaching a wider audience."

He has lived in central Auckland all his life, so moving to the Sargeson flat, where he will continue work on a new novel, will not represent a major change.

He has recently finished his fourth novel and sent it off to Canongate. Finishing a book is always a good time, he agrees. "Starting them is fun, finishing them is fun. Everything else is just hard work. Hard work indeed."

Says Plumb: "People say to me, 'How do you sit there and do it, day after day?' And I say, 'That's exactly it. That's what you do."'

The Buddle Findlay Sargeson Fellowship has contributed to a considerable body of fiction.

Works that were either written or completed during their authors' tenure at the Sargeson Centre include Catherine Chidgey's second novel Golden Deeds, Kapka Kassabova's Love in the Land of Midas, and Tina Shaw's City of Reeds.